Exactly, I recently heard the nodeup podcast where it was said that io.js is beta and don't expect rc-1 or beta tag, just plain semver, but said that eventually both forks should unite again. That plus update-on-release V8s are incompatible with Joyent's "enterprise grade tested" releases.
The only way that this will realistically work is if it falls under a single project. But hopefully the formation of this foundation will lead to a cohesive platform. Its fine if a small team or single developer runs a canary setup; at larger scale development it becomes very difficult to coordinate when its right to run LTS versus not. You'll always default to running what's on production.
I like the two different ideas living together.
A bit like:
- Node.js: LTS
- X: Public release
- io.js: Beta/Canary